Generous support from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation establishes a new center for Wealth and Income Inequality at UC Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley, and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation are proud to announce the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at UC Berkeley.  

Randy Katz, Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Berkeley states, “UC Berkeley is proud to be partnering with the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation to address one of the most critical societal issues of our time. The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at UC Berkeley will create a research hub for campus and beyond, enabling our world leading scholars to deepen our understanding of the inequality in society and formulate new approaches to address the challenge of creating a more equitable society. Beyond Berkeley’s well known legacy in social activism, the Center will give us the much needed resources to develop a pathway to action that allow our research to impact people’s lives.”   

The Center will serve as the primary convening point at UC Berkeley for research, teaching and data development concerning the causes, nature, and consequences of wealth and income inequalities with a special emphasis on the concentration of wealth at the very top.  

The Center begins formal operations in 2019 and will be led by Gabriel Zucman, professor of economics and public policy at UC Berkeley, and Emmanuel Saez, professor of economics and director of Berkeley’s Center for Equitable Growth. “Now more than ever, there is a need for rigorous and innovative research on rising inequality, its root causes and the best ways to address it. This new Stone Center will be a tremendous resource for supporting research at UC Berkeley and for training the future generations of researchers and policy-makers. I am very grateful to James and Cathleen Stone for their generosity and look forward to developing this new center”. Professor Gabriel Zucman.

 “The accelerating concentration of wealth within the United States and around the world is among our most pressing societal challenges. To help ensure it receives the increased attention it requires, we have set up teaching and research programs at four top flight universities. I am delighted that UC Berkeley, which has a distinguished history of addressing the topic of inequality from an interdisciplinary perspective, is now the fifth campus with a Stone Center dedicated to examining the causes and consequences of wealth and income inequality.”  Jim Stone